Love democracy, despise your fellow citizens

The thought here is a familiar sour-grapes yuckface that those on the losing ends of elections make about what they think wins elections — catering to the intellectual tastes of a credulous and decadent electorate. It’s a old Platonic worry about democracy, and it’s usually invoked by those who think their own democracy has made a bad decision. (It’s all about what a good means for decision-making democracy is when they win elections, of course.)

As I take it the trope here is a form of what I’ve started calling the ‘No Reasonable Opposition’ strategy for political argument. Take the move here as follows: The electorate made a decision I disagree with; from this, we can infer that they were deeply distracted and mis-informed. They wouldn’t have made that kind of decision if they knew what they were doing. There are two bad consequences of this line of thinking. First, it’s self-sealing (as losing elections isn’t taken as evidence one needs to rethink one’s views, but of how fargone the rest of the citizenry is). Second, it’s a perfect way to not even bother to get one’s views out for inspection — pearls to swine, at this point.